Post by karlhempel on Jul 27, 2011 14:20:26 GMT -5
With the growing ease to obtain almost any information at the touch of a button, people are remembering less and less. Our brains are becoming lazier and we as a society are more incompetent, because we simply don’t have to challenge our brains to the extent we used to. With a medium like the internet, the retention of knowledge by the individual’s mind becomes less and less important because the Supreme Being’s mind- the internet- already has the knowledge permanently archived. In order to assess the internet’s effect on society, pervious mediums will be explored, the human’s brain analogized and ultimately the all-powerful being of the internet discussed.
Before the general population could read or write, people had to completely depend on their minds to retain information, therefore people feared for the development of writing and reading on a large-scale because they feared people would become completely dependent on writing. Is Google Making Us Stupid stated, “Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.”’ Yet, reading and writing did come about and have, of course, become common in today’s society. As technology becomes even more advanced we begin to read more and more. Is Google Making Us Stupid pointed out: “Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s.” Yet, the bigger problem in today’s society is the fact that peoples’ concentrations are not what they used to be because of the new medium- the internet. The article mentioned, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon.”
An analogy which has been used time and time again is comparing the internet to the human brain. As the internet shoots off into its young adult life, it gains information at an alarmingly fast rate about basically everything. The Internet is becoming increasingly complex and its lobes may soon explode if not cared for properly. The human brain may not be able to obtain the amount or depth of knowledge the Internet can, yet it does work similarly. The algorithm which our brains have become accustomed to is just as important as the computer’s algorithm to the internet. Our brains have created a certain sort of algorithm to live our lives by. Whether our algorithm is as simply as work, eat, sleep, and repeat or something more along the lines of extreme complexity, our brains have a certain sort of algorithm to run off of. The Internet’s algorithm is even simpler: to forever extend it’s intellectually capabilities and capacities. The point is simple, our brains and the artificially intelligence we create are becoming increasingly similar, which makes one question their self-worth. Is Google Making Us Stupid even goes as far to declare, “The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.”
Lastly, the existence of the internet is basically determined by the all-powerful being of the internet, Google. Google is the search engine which determines what one will find depending on what they are looking for. Is Google Making Us Stupid stated, “The Company [Google] has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”’ Google’s mission statement fits perfectly with what they are actually achieving. Google has almost complete control on the finding of information, which makes Google the all-powerful being of the Internet.
Thus, as society continues to progress and we become more and more dependent on newly developed mediums, we must learn to continue to increase the capacities and capabilities of our minds. The survival of our society and the continuing importance of the human brain will be dependent on the usage of the mediums which we as a society have become presented with, specifically the Internet. Therefore, people need to think less about asking the all-powerful being of the Internet for help and instead search the deep crevices of their minds for the information they desire.
Before the general population could read or write, people had to completely depend on their minds to retain information, therefore people feared for the development of writing and reading on a large-scale because they feared people would become completely dependent on writing. Is Google Making Us Stupid stated, “Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.”’ Yet, reading and writing did come about and have, of course, become common in today’s society. As technology becomes even more advanced we begin to read more and more. Is Google Making Us Stupid pointed out: “Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s.” Yet, the bigger problem in today’s society is the fact that peoples’ concentrations are not what they used to be because of the new medium- the internet. The article mentioned, “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon.”
An analogy which has been used time and time again is comparing the internet to the human brain. As the internet shoots off into its young adult life, it gains information at an alarmingly fast rate about basically everything. The Internet is becoming increasingly complex and its lobes may soon explode if not cared for properly. The human brain may not be able to obtain the amount or depth of knowledge the Internet can, yet it does work similarly. The algorithm which our brains have become accustomed to is just as important as the computer’s algorithm to the internet. Our brains have created a certain sort of algorithm to live our lives by. Whether our algorithm is as simply as work, eat, sleep, and repeat or something more along the lines of extreme complexity, our brains have a certain sort of algorithm to run off of. The Internet’s algorithm is even simpler: to forever extend it’s intellectually capabilities and capacities. The point is simple, our brains and the artificially intelligence we create are becoming increasingly similar, which makes one question their self-worth. Is Google Making Us Stupid even goes as far to declare, “The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.”
Lastly, the existence of the internet is basically determined by the all-powerful being of the internet, Google. Google is the search engine which determines what one will find depending on what they are looking for. Is Google Making Us Stupid stated, “The Company [Google] has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”’ Google’s mission statement fits perfectly with what they are actually achieving. Google has almost complete control on the finding of information, which makes Google the all-powerful being of the Internet.
Thus, as society continues to progress and we become more and more dependent on newly developed mediums, we must learn to continue to increase the capacities and capabilities of our minds. The survival of our society and the continuing importance of the human brain will be dependent on the usage of the mediums which we as a society have become presented with, specifically the Internet. Therefore, people need to think less about asking the all-powerful being of the Internet for help and instead search the deep crevices of their minds for the information they desire.